Polycarbonates are well known termoplastic materials which, due to their many advantageous properties, find use as thermoplastic engineering materials in many commercial and industrial applications. The polycarbonates exhibit, for example, excellent properties of toughness, flexibility, impact strength, optical clarity, and the like. The polycarbonates can generally be prepared by reacting a dihydric phenol with a carbonate precursor to provide generally linear polymers consisting of the residues of the dihydric phenols linked to one another through carbonate linkages. These polycarbonates and their preparation are disclosed, inter alia, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,028,365; 3,275,601; 3,334,154 and 3,915,926.
It would, however, be very advantageous in certain applications if polycarbonates could be provided which in addition to exhibiting all of the properties commonly possessed by presently available polycarbonate resins, also exhibited the characteristics or properties of rubbery material, i.e., elasticity, shape memory, and the like. It is the object of the instant invention to provide polycarbonates which exhibit rubbery characteristcs while simultaneously retaining, at least to a significant degree, substantially all or most of the other advantageous properties of presently available polycarbonates.